Stuff We Like: Reports From the Floor at ATExpo

After Day 1 at the 28th annual Assembly Technology Expo, it looks as if the strategy of co-locating the show with the Electronics Assembly Show, Quality Expo, National Manufacturing Week and Plastec Midwest is, indeed, producing the “synergies” that the show organizers expected.

 

We’ve seen plenty of interesting equipment at the show so far. Topping my list are a nifty press setup from PennEngineering and a new way to attach wires to circuit boards.

After Day 1 at the 28th annual Assembly Technology Expo, it looks as if the strategy of co-locating the show with the Electronics Assembly Show, Quality Expo, National Manufacturing Week and Plastec Midwest is, indeed, producing the “synergies” that the show organizers expected.

 

We’ve seen plenty of interesting equipment at the show so far. Topping my list is a nifty press setup from PennEngineering. The hydropneumatic press is configured to install several different self-clinching fasteners in a sample piece of sheet metal-without having to stop and change tooling. Four anvils are affixed to a rotary indexing table. Two anvils are for high-volume fasteners fed from a pair of vibratory feeder bowls. The other two are for low-volume fasteners fed by hand from a rotating, subdivided parts bin. To assist the operator, the anvils are color-coded to match the tooling on the feeder bowls and the rotating parts bin.

 

The press is programmed to install the fasteners in a particular order, automatically rotating the table and adjusting the insertion parameters for the fastener at hand, says Bob Scanland, North American sales manager for the company’s Pemserter line of fastener installation presses. The operator just has to worry about loading the low-volume fasteners and positioning the assembly over the anvil. A red dot of laser light helps with latter task.

 

Another innovation I saw at the show was up in the Electronics Assembly Show. Zierick Manufacturing Corp. has come up with a new way to attach wires to printed circuit boards. In the past, assemblers had three options for attaching a wire to a circuit board: hand soldering, a pin-and-socket connector, or and insulation displacement connector. Zierick has developed an alternative that’s more economical and that takes up less space on the board. It’s a surface-mount, insulation-piercing crimp terminal.

 

The terminal has a flat base with two perpendicular side walls. Two insulation-piercing contact spikes protrude from the flat base. Between the spikes is a flat area to facilitate vacuum pick-up and placement. There are two deep score lines near the transition area between the side wall and the base of the terminal.

The terminal is fed, placed and soldered to a circuit board like any other surface-mount component. Then, a wire is laid inside the terminal and the assembly is placed into a small press. The press crimps the terminal walls over the wire. In the process, the insulation-piercing spikes penetrate the wire without the necessity of removing the insulation. The spikes make contact with the wire strands.

 

The crimp not only makes electrical contact with the conductors, but it also provides excellent strain relief for the wire, says Janos Legrady, vice president of R&D at Zierick. The score lines ensure that no deformation is introduced near the edge of the solder fillets, preventing cracking and peeling of the solder joint.

 

The ideal application for the terminal is for instances where the wire passes through the terminal and numerous serial connections are made to a single wire. A good example of that kind of application is channel block lettering, where a series of LEDs is attached to a pair of wires.